In radio technology, the transfer of data with the aid of electromagnetic waves, thus apparently via the medium air (over-the-air, OTA) is sometimes referred to as an air interface. Such an air interface is in particular characterized in that no solid-state transfer medium such as a copper or a glass fiber cable is used, which for the purposes of the following explanations, does not exclude transfer in vacuum. Telecommunications approaches which utilize such a transfer are, for example, over-the-air programming (OTA), over-the-air service provisioning (OTASP), over-the-air provisioning (OTAP) and over-the-air parameter administration (OTAPA).
Of particular significance are the conventional technologies for updating so-called firmware, i.e., software which is embedded in electronic devices. Modifications of the above-named OTA technologies adapted to firmware are summarized in telecommunications under the generic term firmware-over-the-air programming (FOTA).
German Patent Application No. DE 10105454 A1 describes a method for automatically updating software via an air interface, which is used for updating software running on a system, by novel software modules, these software modules initially being tested and application modules subsequently being derived from these software modules.